Sharks tweet to swimmers in Australia

Sharks in Western Australia are going to find themselves tweeting to swimmers that they are heading to shallow waters looking for a human sized snack.

The Department of Fisheries has introduced a new system, in which Jaws will announce their own presence via Twitter.

More shark attacks occur in Western Australia than almost anyplace else on Earth and the government is forced to spend a fortune on helicopter-based spotters and co-ordinating members of the public who report their own sightings.

Now the researchers have come up with the Shark Monitoring Network, the system uses acoustic tags that are attached to the fins of individual sharks, along with buoyed monitoring devices that pick up the signals transmitted by those tags. When a tagged shark swims within range of one of the monitors, its species, size and location is automatically recorded.

The data is transmitted via satellite to a computer, which immediately posts it on Twitter. It means that the shark’s location is instantly known.

So far, the system uses 19 satellite-linked monitors, that keep track of 338 tagged sharks – species include great whites, tigers and bulls. It does depend on the sharks being tagged in the first place, and swimmers checking twitter, but it is a start. It will not stop a determined shark eating someone it does not like either. Already Apple fanboys are warned from straying too close to the water.